Who Makes Your Decisions? - The Power of Priming

In a 2010 experiment, 54 passersby were asked to read a resume and evaluate a job candidate.  Some were handed the resume on a hard clipboard and others on a light one.  Researchers found that when the resume was on a heavy clipboard, the candidate was rated higher and more seriously interested in the position.  In short, the “heaviness” of the clipboard created a psychological prime for competence and seriousness.

Priming occurs when one stimulus creates a specific reaction to a later stimulus without our conscious awareness.  In a different experiment, a male job applicant was rated more negatively when seen sitting next to an overweight woman than one of normal weight, suggesting that the weight of the heavier woman primed the rater with negative associations.

Priming is widespread in our decision making. Being subconscious, it is hard to detect.  In an experiment at Newcastle University in the UK, an “honesty box” allowed psychology department office workers to contribute money toward the cost of coffee/tea.   Near the coffee/tea station, researchers posted various notices each week.  One week they also posted a picture of flowers, and the next week a picture of a pair of eyes.  These alternating pictures went on for about ten weeks.  Contributions to the honesty box were nearly three times as high in “eye” weeks.

The mechanism by which priming works is not entirely clear but appears to involve learning and memory.  Associations with stimuli are formed in memory and strengthened through repetitive exposure so that, later on, a stimulus triggers reactions without our conscious attention.

Those who understand priming can use it to sell everything from consumer products to public policies to political candidates.  Music, for example, can help sell wine.  In one two-week experiment, French and German music were played in the background in a supermarket on alternate days.  The amount of French or German wine sold increased over the other choice on days when the matching music was played, and customer surveys revealed consumers were unaware of the music’s impact.  In another study, researchers found that support for a tax increase for schools increased when polling stations were inside school buildings.  Research also showed that many college students who initially preferred John Kerry in the 2004 election became more conservative and changed their support to George Bush after they were primed to think about suffering severe pain.   Polls at the time consistently showed Republicans as the party most linked with keeping people safe from terrorist attacks.

Sometimes primes disadvantage people without their awareness or anyone’s clear intent. In one experiment, women who took a math exam with two other women scored 70 percent, but when they took it with two men, the score was only 55 percent.

Priming need not just be by happenstance or consciously manipulative.  In capable hands, it might be used to improve desired behavior.  One researcher suggests that a depressed patient who “self-stereotypes” as incompetent might be aided by a therapist who focus attention on recalling situations in which the patient has been successful in the past, this creating positive primes in memory and, hopefully, future behavior.

We cannot escape the potential of primes to impact our decisions and actions.  Does priming mean that those situations override free will?  Science cannot yet tell us whether being primed to take an action means we have no choice.  However, since not all primes work for everyone exposed to them, cultural learning no doubt plays a significant role. 

Thus, the implication of priming is that if we don’t question and intervene in our own decision making process, we can succumb to priming when we might prefer not to do so.  Avoiding the ability of priming to manipulate choices in our lives may require, for example, slowing our decision making to question what factors and what people are influencing us.  It may require us to get views from others not subject to the same priming stimuli.   It may require us to unlearn prior associations by making them more explicit so we can choose to ignore or change them.  

As for those who consciously count on priming to gain them everything from consumer purchases to votes, there is little to restrain them short of ethical standards, professional scrutiny and sanctions, in some situations legal safeguards and, of course, the intelligent determination of their targets.  At present, those who understand the power of priming are often several steps ahead of those who are impacted by it.